Post navigation

Asus Eee PC pseudo-review

There is enough speed here to do anything that I would want to do on a day-to-day simple productivity computer.

There is no more wait launching applications like Firefox and Thunderbird than there is on a full-size computer.

It plays back video and display flash-based video on websites clearly and smoothly.

The Software

The Eee PC features a perfect set of pre-installed applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Skype and Pidgin.

There is even a terminal app available with a simple command-key sequence.

The application launcher is simple, pleasing to look at and sufficient. It offers easy access to popular internet services and has a favorites tab that can be loaded with user-defined goodies.

The add/remove utility in the settings tab makes it easy to update included software or remove applications that are not needed.

The Hardware

The screen is small, but it’s high resolution allows it to display more than you would expect it to. It is large enough to display productivity apps like OpenOffice and Google Docs without dropping or clipping elements of the interface. It’s also very brigh and great to look at.

The keyboard is, in my opinion, only a little more useful than a phone keypad. It will allow you to do simple instant messaging, compose short replies to email messages and enter URLs into Firefox. For anything more than that, I would connect an external keyboard as I am using right now.

The trackpad is functional and not terrible to use. The right side of the pad allows you to scroll web pages very easily and the button gives you easy right-click, left-click access.

There are 3, THREE USB ports. That’s one more than my macbook!

I’m surprised by both a microphone jack and an ethernet port. Combine the mic port with the web cam and skype and you’ve got quite a portable video conference computer.

There is a VGA port on the side. I haven’t hooked it up to a monitor, but the combination of that with a external keyboard and mouse would turn this into a nice desktop computer. It would also be a fantastic computer to take somewhere to present.

The DC power converters for portable devices are often as large as the thing that it’s charging. The brick for this is a nice small size and it has a power cable that is longer than most laptop cords so you don’t have to sit right next to power if you are using it while you charge.

For Web Development?

I figured that I’d better put a web-development take on this whole review…

There is not a text editor or development application on the device that would suffice for doing web development. While I’m sure that you could find something and install it, I do not think that the computer would be a good choice for doing any real code work.

I’m sure that in a pinch, the computer would do a good job of accessing an html file and making necessary changes if a “real” computer was not readily accessible.

The camera on the laptop seems to take decent pictures and good video. These would work well for someone doing blogging or working on other social-class applications.

The microphone port would work well for someone wishing to podcast with it. There are already instructions available on the internet to install audacity for podcast editing.

Final analysis? Web site development = bad. Blogging = awesome.

I think that just about covers it. Alone, it is probably the best portable internet device available. Combined with an external keyboard, mouse it is a very sufficient portable computer and combined with a display it has enough power that it would easily fit many computer users’ needs.